NEW HAVEN -- Fictional Dunder Mifflin had its documentary coming-out party recently on TV's "The Office"; tonight, the real-life James Hillhouse High School girls' basketball program and fans will get theirs.

WFSB-TV (Channel 3 Eyewitness News) will preview a dramatic 55-minute John Holt documentary about the 2011-12 Hillhouse girls basketball team at 7 p.m. in the Hillhouse cafeteria, said WFSB. It is invitation-only.

"House Family" (no airdate yet on WFSB) looks at the team's bid for a fourth-straight state championship, a campaign that started in 2011 as the city suffered a spike in deadly violence.

New Haven's 34 homicides in 2011 are a big part of the documentary, Holt said. Star player Bria Holmes lost her mentor, Timothy "T.J." Mathis, to a shooting, for one.

And the story's plot thickens late in the season, when the Newtown team figures prominently in Hillhouse's playoff fortunes. The city with a reputation for gun violence that season faces the town that (later in 2012) suffered nearly the city's death toll in one day. (Holt deals with Sandy Hook in an interview with Newtown's point guard in the epilogue.)

Connecticut's first McDonald's All-American, Holmes, is shown in action and during the hectic college recruiting process. Also seen in compelling moments, says Holt, are head coach Catrina Hawley-Stewart, who is raising her sister's three children after her sister's death in a suspicious house fire; and Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina, who now is running for mayor.

Channel 3 sportscaster Holt spent much of the season with the team, on and off the court, he said this week. And he worked 19 months on the film. Holt is not seen in the film but he shot most of the video in the documentary and all of the editing on the unusually long project for a TV news station. He credits that to support of his news director.

"If you've ever seen 'Hoop Dreams,' it's a little like that. I wanted to follow a team for a year," Holt said Wednesday.

He said he found that Hillhouse is "not your ordinary school.

"Achieving success in inner-city New Haven often takes extraordinary effort and people," he said. "From the never-dull Kermit Carolina to the uncommonly dedicated head basketball Coach Catrina Hawley-Stewart, the characters in 'House Family' live extraordinary lives. This is their story, a story much bigger than basketball."

Holt, who shared in the sports unit's regional Murrow Award win recently for a piece about Oxford High School's football team, is often seen reporting local sports on WFSB with another multimedia sports journalist, Joe Zone.

Carolina, the boys basketball coach at Hillhouse for seven seasons, including state championships in 2006 and 2007, was assistant principal at the school for four years, and became principal in 2010.